We hear how frustrated you are that we haven't delivered a solution to this issue and we share your disappointment. We've spent time investigating what it would take to fix it and have learned that it will require a significant engineering effort that we can't commit to right now. It really pains me to tell you that we are not going to be able to deliver a solution in the near future and I apologize for not being able to offer a clearer ETA. Please know, however, that this truly is a high priority for us.

First, thanks for all the input, feedback, and patience you have shown around this subject. The original need to limit the number of replies displayed for a topic was twofold:

1. To manage back-end resources involved in managing the large amount data being presented.
2. To manage the way in which long lists of replies would be presented in the user interface.

In the end, showing only 15 replies after a certain number was exceeded resulted in a poor user experience. The truncation solution spawned a lot of ideas about clever ways to get access to the "hidden" replies, and a number of topics posted here discuss these options. Rather than introduce functionality that works around the fundamental restriction, we instead decided to address the root cause. We have implemented better resource management on the back end so we can efficiently manage topics with very large numbers of replies requested in the user interface. We have also implemented user interface controls that allow you to conveniently page through long lists of replies. We hope this satisfies the underlying needs of community members (to see all the replies on a topic), and gives community owners the freedom to introduce topics that generate a lot of conversation. After all, a key ingredient to a healthy community is active conversations, so the more we can do to support such conversations, the better.